Pate 4 Photography and Painting: Thomas Struth’s Museum Photographs Hans Being Catching the Eye ‘The first time I saw one of Thomas Struth’s ‘museum photographs! in a private home in Munich, I suddenly found myself transported half way «around the world ~ © Chicago, where people stood looking at Seuat's La Grande Jatt just as reverently as I had once done. Although I coulda’t see their faces, they appeared to be — justifiably, it scemed to me —involved in 4 kind of celebration of the painting, Once they turned their attention to ‘the painting they became as tranquil asthe painting and, indeed, still re, now that they too have become part of a picture. The solemn ritual is distrupted only slightly by the young couple on the right who are convers- ing, With all the visitors’ eyes turned to the painting, the only one visible in the picture, it takes on a special glow that [gratefully enjoy. ‘These people in the picture, who stand quite close te me at eye level, apparently life-sized, are actually obstructing my view, but nevertheless, Lam fascinated by thom. The colours they are wearing are quite different from those in the painting and the poses they have taken, although acc dental, also create a very different composition. Without yet being aware of it, lam beginning to make comparisons. In spite of the artificial colour- ing of their clothes, the various blue tones contrast playfully, in a rather ‘camp manner, with the shades of ochre in Seurat’s work, and Lam quite |appy to admit this to myself, as my own aesthetic preferences (or are they. weaknesses?) are easier to tolerate in others. And why defend my visual preferences when everyone else in the picture is obviously enjoying the painting so much? My eye is arrested by two motifs that have nothing whatever to do with each other, but are nevertheless connected as I view them. The peo- ple ate observing, and the painting is being observed. Although the pho- tograph suggests the contrary, [suspect the people in front ofthe painting have only glanced atit for a momeri, Despite their conspicuous presence, they seem strangely unreal and ephemeral, like waves passing across the surface of water that will soon become calm and smooth again. The 700m, and the painting retain that timeless permanence that impresses itself on ‘us when we walk through a museum; it remains completely untouched by. ‘our presence, ‘This impression of unseality confuses me, since the muscum’s visitors are the only reality captured in the photo. The painting, by contrast, is a fiction, bu it has a secure location in our imagination, a place that is more secure than anything real could ever lay claim to, We are familiar with the status ofa painting, bothasan object and asa symbol of art. It has ts estab= lishes place, not only there on the wall, but also within us, in our memory. ‘So what is the matter with the museum visitors and with the photograph hhero? What are the viewers actually doing when they are looking at Seurat? Are they looking for information, or is their gaze simply resting, ‘without focusing on anything? Are they curious about the painted figures, ‘who stand at right angles to them and are looking out of their picture not in our direction, but to a place we cannot see, beyound our field of ‘The people in the painting, who take no notice of those observing them, are completely absorbed in their own world. In contrast the obser- vers in front of the painting, are transported from where they are to some- ‘where else, Le. within the painting, where they, strictly speaking, canPiste never be, The observers see people gathered on a sunny river bank, some- thing we ourselves have often experienced. But they are wearing clothes from a different period, and they belong to a different culture, one in ‘which people behaved in a stylized way. There is nothing unusual in the painting, but it nevertheless makes the familiar appear strange, bathed in different light ina light we havenot yet seen it in, The same is true ofthe photograph itself, whose intial attraction I was at frst unable to explain, because it offered nothing new in terms of a motif, except perhaps its photographic form ~ a fact that I realized deserved some thought. 1 decided there and then to get to know more of these ‘museum photo- graphs’ in the hope of understanding this one better. ‘The opportunity to do so came up some time later atthe house of an art collector in Seattle, This time I suddenly found myself being transport- ed across the Atlantic in the opposite direction to the Louvre. No, I don’t ‘want to start describing the second photo now. Sulfice it to say that the second one was quite different from the first filled with the halflight of a ‘museum of the old world, it led the eye past a gigantic painting upwards to where the light entered from an invisible source. The paintings on the ‘wall dominated the entire room, which opened up to an imperceptible height over a group of children who, unimpressed by the dignity of the oom and its paintings, were simply siting on the Noor like a flock of binds: a cheerful intermezzo from our own time set in the midst of an old ‘opera. In Veronese’s painting, which used to adorn the celling in the Doge's palace, a batte is ragging between heaven and earth. And yet in the museum room, there sa group of people, who will soon depart siting pete with painting, the effect of them was more true than that of any art ‘rit was true ina different way, ina way art could never be true. Asis well known, in spite ofthis advantage, photographers nevertheless hoped to inherit the legacy of painting as an art form, and Benjamin, to name but cone, supplied a theory to back this up. Early photographs were clearly lestined for private albums rather than museums, and at that time theit format was not lange enough for museum display. As Struth’s museum series shows, this has since changed. In the meantime, photography itself has become an old medium, ene ‘whose extensive history is presented in exhibitions —in art exhibitions, of course. In fat art today only includes those things that are capable of being presented in an exhibition. And yet now, precisely at the moment of its eiumphas an art form, photogeaphy is being threatened by more recent ‘media that dispute its claim asthe ultimate medium for the production of images. Its pictures are not merely being overtaken by digital computer images, but also, in hindsight, called into question as well. Photography lost its innocence since the belief in the possibility of the objective repro duction of reality began to be questioned. The endeavour to reproduce reality is now being superseded by a desire to produce artifice, We have learnt to use photography just a we wish, and we can invent images using new technology just as easily as was formerly done using. paintbrush and crayon. It is already being claimed that ‘we are entering a post-photographic age’ as a book by W. J. Mitchell suggests, and that ‘an interlude of false innocence has come to an end’. This ‘interlude’ was Drought about by the invention of photography, whose own technology creates distance and simultaneously disguises it, Ina catalogue written by Michael Kobler this transformation is summed up in the phrase, ‘From finding images to inventing images’ {Yom Bilder-Fnden zum Bild-Erfin- den’. Staged photography’ and the Photography of Invention’, to quote the titles of some recent photography exhibitions, are the slogans of the day. The photographie image, if itis still produced using its own techno- logy, now records an artificial arrangement invented solely for the pur- pose of creating ts own fiction —a result we would least expect from the medium photography: “The American photographer Cindy Sherman has raised this artifci- ality to a principle. She, too, is competing with painters, but instead of making a compariwn with painting, which is Struth’s subject, she has created a fit of painting, As a result the boundaries between the two media, which Struth draws so clearly in his cycle, disappear and all perspective vanishes in a surface of enigmatic artificiality. Sherman is a quick change artist; ae Warhol once put ita ‘eal actress, who only enters the stage within the photo, She does not reveal herself to us in a self portrait or in historical costume, but purely asa figure of art, for whom such distinctions become irrelevant. Itis not her disguise, but her existence within the photo that represents a pure contradiction to the ‘reality principle and its relation to ‘ar’ The contrast between Sherman's work and what Thomas Struth is doing in his ‘museum photographs’ could hardly be greater, although 1 ‘would hesitate to claim that he intended i, Its simply that his point of departure is quite different. This i why all of his motifs are undeniably real: the rooms, the paintings, and also the people in front of them. The rooms and paintings are familiar to us, and we could be the people in the pictures, The techniques Struth employ romain strictly svithin the techn cal limitations of the medium and do not realy on unexpected effects, Struth’s series photography is just as self-referential as painting wnt the two became entangled in the enigna oftheir dialogue. And finally the two levels, painting there and photography here, are separated in both time and space, so that no confusion can arise Struth’s photography is not only significant as surface, but also as clepth in the sense of ‘seeing through’ [‘Durch-Schauew’, to comprellend] and ‘perceiving’ |"Wltr-Nelnmen’, to take to be tru’, to perceive]. There is a contradiction here with Warhols famous statement that there is ‘nothing, hidden behind the (pure) surface’ that everything is purely beautiful arti- ficial surface. Pop Art, as is well known, transformed photography into painting, to put itin a rather simplitied way, and in the process reduced the twoart forms to the same level. In Struth’s work, by contrast, they are antithetically related to one another, and thus their identities are main: tained, The photographic surface, which opens onto real spaces, contrasts with the surface of painting, which, with its very different colours and tex tures opens onto imaginary spaces. The sequence of photography and painting, with the space between them extended before the camera's eye, also points tothe temporal difference between the two media. When one relates the two art forms to the information they contain about their own environment, then photography can be seen as a medium of the present day, just as painting once was. This is why the art that captures images of our contemporaries will remain contemporary as long a8 we still want 10 record our own world instead of atificial worlds. As Struth puts it, photo: graphy must ‘be honest The Relationship between the Public and the Paintings The images we see in the ‘museum photographs’ challenge us, however, toask whether itis really our world that we are viewing. The museumsPaes Paes 19,14 Strath has selected were almost all built during the nineteenth century, and the public museum is, in principle, a concept ofthe last century. The so-called museum picture ~ as a subject for painting ~ flourished during the nineteenth century as well, and has become a rarity in oar own cen- tury. When mauseum rooms are photographed, it is usually done for docu- ‘mentation purposes, and not in order to compare media. have seen, Struth has chosen old paintings, and even the most recent of these ~ the Impressionists in the Musee d/Orsay or in the Art Insitute in Chicago ~ still belong to the nineteenth century. Only the members of the public, among whom we recognize our selves, represent the world of today, precisely because they are guests in a ‘world of yesterday. Using their eyes, the people try to establish relation- ships with paintings of the past, paintings, which were not painted for them and often not even for the museum, The trickiness of this situation, becomes clear anly when we become conscious of our own eyes, Ibis only. ‘an illusion that we are observing ourselves, Infact we are not, because at {his moment we are only remembering paintings while looking ata photo- ‘graph. Because of its large format, colouring, and place of exhibition, the photo has taken the place of the paintings, o that yesterday's situation, hich is actually the motif, reverses itself to become today’s situation, ‘which lies in the medium. The tautology implicit in the act of viewing viewers dissolves as the medium and the form in which information is ‘being conveyed change. The museum is a public space in which people nevertheless behave privately. Thomas Struth started with a series of photographs of street scenes, in which the people who usually move about in the streets are absent. He continued witha series of group portraits (of couples and entire families, in which people remain within their private space. In his series ‘of ‘museum photographs’, he has returned to public space, this time with ‘human figures. They have all come hereto do one and the same thing, but they practise this collective activity in a variety of private ways that also reflect contradictions within our society ~ social as well as ethnic and cultural differences ~ in our age of world tourism. The bourgeois society of the past, which had museums to itself, is today no more than a pale ‘memory that only finds expression in the performance of cultural cy. nally, as we ‘The museum visiters of teday come from such varying backgrounds that they are unable to act similarly, even when they are trying to do the same thing, Strath called his carly street photographs “subconscious places bbecause the publicspace is reflected in the subconscious of the people who liven it, The domestic environment ofthe ‘portraits’, which is shaped by the people themselves, is different. In the museum rooms, which people neither live in nor shape for themselves, yet a thitd situation is evoked. ‘The museum rooms form a public space that expects only visitors, but ‘which appeals toa shared subconscious that expresses itself in individual forms of behaviour, in the way each personality unfolés. The visitors in whatever manner, enter intoa relationship with history and also svith art. Relationship isa term onehardly expectsto use when thinkingabout the way in which paintingsare viewed. Inthe usual sense ofthe term, relation ships arise between people, but not between people and paintings. Every orm of perception, however isa kind of relationship that individuals enter into With objects they wish to perceive. This is all the more true of the complex situation represented by & picture, since at the moment of view ing. a picture (whether painted of nod takes the place sf the world, which ‘we otheriise experience as an image in our mind. We can sense ourselves, ‘obe cither in a picture orin a world, but not in both at the same time, If the process of forming a relationship to pictures takes place on a ‘communal basis, whether the community concerned is organized as a group or assembles by chance, social situations arise such as those Struth has hustrated in a different way In his group portraits, Visitors to a ‘museum behave, when they ate looking at paintings, either similarly or contradictorly, depending on whether they have come to the museum individually or as a group, whether they look atthe painting themsehees or allow someone else to explain it to them, whether they pass by a paint- ing without paying any attention to it or pause in front of it spellbound, ‘whether their gaze loses itself in the painting or whether they reach an understanding ofthe picture with someone else through their eyes. rela- Ulonship lies in the gaze. : This the gaze, too, which relates the museum paintings to Struth’s por traits, although in the latter the subjects are gazing at the camera. In the 167 museum, theirglanceis nota pose, does not seek to distance itself instead, it is a kind of self- forgetfulness and, when it becomes intense, seeks out nearness, The people who are looking at paintings behave differently from, the people who are looked at in Struth’s portraits, who pose before the camera as if on stage. Whether the glance of the muscum-goer becomes intense or remains indecisive, in either case the entire body expresses and conveys it. In its deepest significance, this glance distinguishes itself from the fashionable rituals of communication and information in that it arises involuntarily and subconsciously. People communicate with one another when they are mutually explaining paintings to one another. They acquire information by reading the dates of a work from a sign or skimming a ‘guide book. But afterwards, when their eyes become attached to the pic- ture, or when they turn their eyes away fram the picture while the body: ‘remains fixed in front of i as if from an inner impulse, itis then that they center into a relationship with the painting, whether it is one of attraction or repulsion ~a relationship that can be termed viewing, No matter what type of relationship its, it remains a wholly personal matter that no one ‘ean consciously bring into being, ‘The ‘museum photographs’ record ths glance in an imploring manne asf they were trying to record a phenomenon that was on the point of dis- appearing forever, phenomenon thal tday is perhaps turning into an act of collective remembrance. One may ask whether the museum visitors are only doing what they are suppose to do there, directed by the commands of their subconscious, or whether they know what they want to do there ‘This is precisely why the ‘museum photographs’ are constantly seeking, ‘out the ephemeral glance of the passer-by as well as the prolonged gave of a viewer ~ and even attribute to this prolonged gaze, within the suspen= ded time of the photograph, a length it perhaps never attained itself. Pre- cisely in this suspended time, afresh contradiction expresses itself ~ one that lies in the essence of photography, however. The gaze caught in the ‘photo isanalogus toa snapshot photo. But the museurn visitors who move from painting o painting to read names and dates without actually gemui- nly looking at the paintings, also have a manner of viewing which is comparable (o snapshot views of the world. Pethaps today we are only. ‘capable ofthe photographic glance that Struth has recorded, Nevertheless, in his photos he gives this glance a pscudo-permanence that sei ecalls authentic viewing, although it does not actually represent it. ‘The relationship that fails to arise in the snapshot or ‘photographic’ lance is often replaced by information which museum visitors gather {rom books, or from the comments of an accompanying guide. The two ‘women in summer travel clothes standing in front of Giotto’s Madonna in the Ulifiza sve only what they have read. All the members of the group listening to an explanation in a Renaissance room in the Kunsthistorisches Maseum in Vienna are all listening tothe same information, but to judge by their postures they soe quite different things. Some are hanging on the swords of the tour guide, while others are looking for what he says in a smal painting which remains invisible to us, hidden behind the woman, ‘ho is standing closest to it, but not looking at it. The painting they are concerned with is in reality hanging on the wall, and the words that are ‘being said about it are really inthe ar, but the glances produced by these ‘evo phenomena remain unclear and ambiguous. There is a question in these glances, but we do not know how itis answered, An exception among Struth’s ‘museum photographs! isthe silent dia- logue in the Rembrandt room in Vienna; the relationship between the painting and its viewer is so intense here thatthe dialogue seems to have only just taken place. A white-haired man, who appears to have taken on. the colours of the painting and its frame, is standing with his hands shyly placed behind him in front of a much younger man, who was nevertheless painted three hundred years before and so was only younger then. Each of the interlocutors in the dialogue remains enclosed within his own biogra- phy no matter when be lived: the one was younger at the time, and the ‘other is older today, and both are bound by the time frame within which their life is taking place. Nevertheless, they seem to be communicating, ‘with each other across the chasm of historical, suprapersonal time. Al- though the viewer is only able to use his eyes, he seems to be listening to the other, who with a movement of his hand, is taking the active part in the dialogue, while the viewer himself keeps his hands clapped behind his back, The person painted andl the person photographed, both of whom cexst only in a picture in which they achieve an unphysical presence with Pate 10 Pategar Degas: Skteh om Netto 1, isthe torte, their physical bodies, ae in the middle of a conversation with each other. [As was said many yeats ago, a picture is the presence of what is absent ‘The dialogue with the Rembrandt portrait rakes on a private note that recalls the private room for which the portrait was originally produced, Ina museum, strangers stand side by side in front of paintings. They only behave similarly if they belong to an organized group, ana they only speak to one another if they came to the museum together. Despite the superficial similarity of their summer or winter garb, the variety of cloth- ing they wear reveals that they all come from very different places. The ppublic that looks at today’s pictures in a museum consists mainly of tourists who are already tired when they arrive at the museum and who have to hurry through it so as not to lose any time. The museum is not ‘their’ museum, which they are visiting on holiday in an elevated mood, as the painted ‘museum pictures’ of an earlier period record, IL is stop on . tourist programme in which there are any number of other interchange- able stops. Today no time to get to know even a single one of them. If we nour home town at all, we probably only do so to seea special exhibition. ‘The law of time has even caught up withthe location of timelessness. ‘Thomas $truth commenced his series of ‘museum photographs’ in the Louvre, which at one time was considered the museum, During the nine ‘wenth century, the first drawings and paintings depicting people in we can visit all the museums in the world, but we have the museum museums were produced bere as well; they were depicted as viewers of, ‘the visible history of ar’, o use a phrase of the fime, secking out the {immortal masterpieces. Every painter in Paris started copying old masters in the Louvre, and as a result they sometimes recorded what they saw happening in the museum itself, Using hundreds of copies, Edgar Degas created an ‘Imaginary museuny’, as Vilor Stoichta once put it, Borrowing, ‘an expression of Andre Malraux's. nan early drawing from around 1860, the recorded a couple standing in front of Glorgione's Concert champétre (a painting that today, to my regret, is once again ascribed to Titian). The ‘two Parisians arein outdoor clothing, clearly in a public place looking at a framed museum painting In this drawing Degas has chosen to depict the clothed musician and the naked nymph of the painting as a couple, enjoy ing themselves in Arcadia, in order to reinforce the contrast created by the urban couple standing infront ofthe painting ‘The same Concert champétreis hanging unnoticed in Struth’s photo in a gap between two pairs of visitors, on a wall crammed with paintings in the Salle des Ftats. The wall appears to belong tothe paintings, and the space in front of il to the museum visitors, who have sat down in pairs on the benches and turned their back to the paintings. The light falling from above In the windowless room gives them the appearance of being on stage. They are relaxing as if in a waiting-room,altliough ~ not visible to uus~ the only painting every visitor tothe Louvre wants to see is hanging, ‘on the opposite wal: the Mona Lia. Perhaps they are already reconciled lo the fact that the painting failed to make any impression on them when. they turned their ‘photographic’ gazes to it and found nothing more than the fact that it was there, where they were looking for it in the weantime, the painting has been moved next door to the Grande Galerie, and the Salle des Flats has been emptied for a special exhibition, so that when I ‘went back to the Louvre, the situation shown in the photo was no longer to_be found — the timeless museum had dissolved into a memory. ‘The event the photograph captures is restricted to the moment when the shutter was released. Everything is captured just as i€ was at that ‘moment. Ths s true, above all, of the visitors. truth has waited until they. ‘formed themselves into a composition’, s he puts it. The colows they are wearing play a part here, but also the postures they adopt: all the people Tala 18sitting on the benches reinforce the series of horizontal lines running {rough the photograph. The composition here is a selection from the ‘myriad contingent events that the real location presented to the camera, Only one of the wi ors, man sitting next to his wife on the extreme left, is looking at a painting, Although his eyes are directed outwards, beyond the boundary of the photograph, the attentiveness of his gaze indicates that it must havea target. He has no doubt fallen uncler the spell of a large painting by Veronese that plays the main patt in another of Steuth's photographs. Init, ne one is looking up to the Olympian sky that is hanging on the wall. Without frightening the group of children surrounding hier, the teacher explains the story ofthe fall ofthe vices, which are crashing downwards to escape Jupiter’s lightning bolt in the painting. The only movement in the room is the explanatory gesture the teacher is making with her hands, and all eyes are ditected towards her hands, as if the teacher was trying to mime the ‘Olympian drama. Despite their differences, the colours ofthe clothes in the photograph seem to echo those of the symphony of eolour in the mas- sive painting. The staging of this photo, with its vertical presentation of space, achieves the opposite effect to the previous one with the benches. Inan older, painted museum picture from the nineteenth century, the same Veronese that isthe centre of attention in Struth’s work can be seen tamed and crowded together with neighbouring pictures on the narrow ‘wall of the Salon Carré. AL that time this was the only room in the Louvre, apart from the Grande Galerie, that was frequently used as a subject by painters. After the political changes of 848, the room was rearranged aga ‘pantheon of master piece “but a hundred years earlier it had been the location ofthe first ‘Salon’ in the history of art. When the Louvre became ‘4 museum, the annual Salon continued to be held in this room for some time, so thal the art exhibition and the museum fought for possession of the room every six months, Later, however, the muscu finally won out, and the ‘Salon’ was forced to move out ofthe Louvre, which by then was devoted primarily to the immortal art of the distant past. The small paint ing records this, and documents in its somewhat naive way the existence ‘fan enchanted temple of art in which stereotyped figures of high society met. This situation has radically altered inthe age of mass culture, as.can be seen in Struth’s photographs of the so-called ‘red rooms’. A_modern migration of peoples is moving through the Salle Molien, down a broad avenue towards the camera, past the dark, colossal paintings of Jacques- Louis David, among which atleast the imperial coronation of Napoleom is still managing to catch the attention of the long-exhausted public. In the Salle Daru, which is entered next, Gericault’s The Raff the ‘Medusa’ brings the migrating horde to a standstill for a breathless moment. Once again, these two photos show radically different relationships between painting and viewer, and our eyes also respond in quite different ways. In the one case we look atthe people who are approaching us oF who have sat down, in front of us in informal groups, while in the other we look zit: the people, who thus drag us into the picture with them, at a painting. The way in which the camera directs the eye in the one case produces a ‘dynamically open space, while in the other it produces a rigid, closed one In which the human figures share in the geometry of the composition. Struth’s photograph of a room in the National Gallery in London creates a similarly rigid visual space centred around a single painting, that has been hung in the middle ofa light wall in a way that recalls its Le Sten Cant Lore pric. 180Poe 12 Pe 6 original location over an altar ina Venice church, A git is bending down to read the artist's signature with the same degree of curiosity as shown, by the Apostle Thomas in Cima’s painting, who places his finger in the ‘wound in Christ’s side to convince himsel that Christ is truly alive again In the modern search for authentification the reality of the work of art has replaced the reality ofthe biblical story, which the altar painting was once intended to testify to, The red-haired woman with the green coat comple- ments the green and gold in the picture frame and gives us the impres- sion of having been Ieft out of the members of the cast in the painting, ‘who are also red-haired. With one exception, all the people in the photo- ‘graph are moving only their heads as they look from one picture to the next ‘With their bodies, they form a composition in the museum room in the same way thatthe group of apostles does in the painting, and as this bap- pens the people in the painting and the people in front of it turn towards cach othet In both cases, their bodies function as areas of colour, but they. are alsa clements of a geometrical shape that contribute tothe depiction of the constructed space ~ the biblical chamber there, and the room in the _muscum here. In the museum, the two figures atthe outer edges ofthe pic- ture scem to extend the visible wall of the room to inchude the side walls ‘we cannot see which carry the paintings they are looking at It is almost as if they had positioned themselves there as signposts to help us orient ‘ourselves. Painting and photography, the analogous nature of which is ‘evident herein their competing aesthetic effects, can thuis be used to create spaces or fake them. This photwgrapled painting (inthe double sense of, reproduction and competition) raises doubts about the truthfulness of [photography when it tries to intoxicate us with beauty and put the reality ‘of imagination a its service. Exchanging Glances, Im the cycle of the ‘museum photographs’, the photo of a young woman alone in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam forms an exception similar to that of the older gentleman with the Rembrandt portrait in Vienna, 18 Amsterdam, the painting isalso by Rembrandt, but one that is quitediffer- cent — just as everything else in this photo is antithetical to the one in Vienna. The young woman is not looking at a picture, but is apparently boing viewed herself by the six dignified gentlemen in the painting, She is looking out ofthe picture, but there isa different quality te her look than that ofthe painted Stabnersters, and she is, of course, looking out ofa dit- ferent pictur: the one by Struth. She seems to be waiting for someone who is not in the picture to offer her some protection against the intimidating, group of men viewing her from behind; someone who will free her from the situation in which she finds Wersll. This ‘Someone’ was probably the photographer himself, even though she avoids leaking directly into the camera. On this one occasion, infact, the figure is posed, ie. prearranged, and itis probably no accident thatthe colours of her clothes correspond so closely te those inthe painting. ‘Bat Struth is not trying to trick ust he clearly indicates the difference between this photo ané the others in the series. The exchange of glances shown hore is a new and unexpected vasiation on the theme of painting ana viewer. Those doing the viewing are in the painting ths time, and the ‘young woman seems to be fleeing from their eyes, The perfect symmetry ‘between the situation in the painting and the situation in front of itis in reality a visual trap, and the appearance is an ilusion: an entirely convine ing illusion Yat ties in Struth’s choice of motifs. Relaty can become an enigma if we do not allow our krovwledgeto correct what our eyes see. The park bench is located inside a building in which, however, there ae land- scapes. The dark interior ofthe guild meeting and the bright interior with the young woman sitting on the bench are locations as different as could be, but nevertheless we see them simultaneously. The two places, the historical room in Amsterdam and today’s museum room in Amsterdam, are more disparate in time than they are in space, although our imagina- tion can overcome time. The old painting, which bears a different time ‘within it, represents an enclave within our time, in precisely the way that Marcel Proust describes the pillars on the Piazzetta in Venice in his fine introduction to John Ruskin’s Sisame and Liles. We can experience this presence of what is absent, the visible location of a long since vanished time ourselves, Sut only photography can conjure this experience up in a %Phe 7 a picture. Within the picture, photography can provide proof of the con- temporancousness of historical painting, and in doing this it provides proof of our cultural experience “The topic of picture and viewer is quickly exhausted if its limitations are not tested, even atthe risk of losing sight of the topic itself Struth was conscious of this situation when he hesitatingly overstepped the bound- aries of his series. When he photographed the large room, for example, he brought the cycle to a dramatic climax. Nowhere else do the colours in the paintings and in the photograph the Accade- ria in Veni coalesce so effortlessly, and the multitude of tourists in the museum seem tomix casually withthe guests at Veronese’s Feast the House of Lev, But they are so distant from us that we can hardly see them as people viewing paintings. The people we see as viewers are those obstructing our view, those who ate looking at Tintoretto's highly dramatic Martyrdom of ‘St. Mark, which, however, is notin the photo for usto see. Only their gazes are in our picture, while the picture being viewed is ‘off camera ‘The magnetism exerted by the camera angle is reinforced by the paint ing in the background, which, because of its exceptional size, is more of a ‘mural than a painting Tt was designed to ft the wall of a monastic refect- ‘ory, where banquets were held infront ofthe painted banquet. This sym- metry is lostin the museum, but itis replaced by a different symmetry, one in which the painting supplies additional museum guests, and a con- tinustion of the museum room in the painted palace of a Venetian aristo- rat. There are stairs descending on each side ofthe high stage on which ‘the biblical banquet is being held, down which painted figures are depart- Ing from the picture ~ and, as we may imagine ~ up which the museum ‘visitors might ascend into it. f we recall that Veronese placed his own con- temporavies in the painting, we can reconstruct the virtuoso interplay between reality and illusion which the painter, matching Struth’s inten tions exactly, was enacting even then, The painter was questioning the boundaries of reality, just as Struth is questioning the boundaries between painting and photography. (Our eyes are involved in this trick, and we become aware ofthe ambi- valence that is one of the attributes of every picture in the world ~ espe- cially those that include other pictures within themselves and venture to toy with infinite regress, the well-known mirror effect. The photograph in the Accademia, however, also questions the essence of pictures, as itis playing its game with a mural that one can no longer simply describe as a painting hanging in a museum, Its here that the limits to Struth’s theme become visible. Initially, he was genuinely to 1g with these limits, as in sn Museum, some of which are on this side of his photographs in the Vatic the boundary of the ‘museum picture’, while others have already crossed it, Two examples may illustrate this effect. A ‘School Class i Front of Renaissance Altar Paintings’ was included in the eycle, while a “Tourist Group in the Stanze di Raffaello’ was not although tis shown here on the following page. “The school class, which is having a history lesson in the museum, fills the small room with a suffocating disorder that flagrantly contradicts the transparent order of the figures in the paintings. The contrast of the photo: ‘graphed bodies with the painted bodies asserts itself with ruthless force here, And the narrow, restricted angle of vision in the muscum room isin complete contrast to the strictly parallel way in which the eye is directed inthe paintings. The paintings and the museum visitors, ew of whom can ‘be consicered to be viewers, seem to be forcing themselves into a room. that they are not capable of sharing. The viewers are suffocating the pic- tures. One can ~ and must ~ distinguish between the two in such a way that the comparison between the media, here photography and there painting, turns into drama, ‘The Tourist Group in the Stanze di Raffaello’ seems to take up this same theme, From a high vantage point we see a tourist group pushed together like a herd of sheep up against a painted wall, while naked figures and figures in armour seem to be blocking their way. They appear to be listening to their guide rather than looking for themselves, but the sroup is not standing, in front of a typical picture that has a frame and (opens like a window onto a room. The painting itself serves as the back {ground to the group, and it overwhelms the silent, expressionless throng, bbencath it with its triumphant spectacle, in which powerful emotions are being unleashed as the ‘Borgo fire (the subject ofthe painting) breaks out By contrast the tourists below looks like they are queuing for tickets toa play which has already started, Jean-Luc Godard, who created a similar Pate tscontrast betwoen reality and fiction (or between everyday life and emotions) in his film Passion, swears by the inconipatbilty of life and ‘theatre; but thisis not Struth’s subject, Instead, Struth has crossed the boundary to a different subject; in the Vatican rooms, the interplay between painting and viewer cannot be developed any further. The location that belongs neither to the painting nor to the viewer has been lost and thus the meeting between the two cannot take place. The mural is not merely a painting; it is also the location of the painting Ibis therefore always here, where the viewers also are, anc. notin some other location towards which they gaze, as if through a win- dow, without being there themselves, In addition, the Stanze di Raffaello are not rooms ina museum, although they form part of a museum today, but painted i ‘museum photographs’ meets its limits, which are clearly more sestrict than one had hoped. ing rooms from an earlier period. Its here that the cycle of The Photographer ‘The artist Thomas Struth is a virtuoso master of the technological poten- lial that is available today to the photographer. The metallic sheen of the colour in Cibachrome prints, which first became available during the late 19605, is intensified by the way in which they are glued to the glass of the frame from behind using a silicone compound, so that the eye sees only reflective window in which the photograph behind the frame is no longer distinguishable. The colours are tested in advance, before the massive developing machine, which i still a rarity in the USA, produces the final photograph. The scale, which varies slightly inthe course ofthe series, is controlled using slide- projection tests s0as to remain closely elated tothe viewer's own perception, Selecting a series of photographs with a common theme and compar- able motifs, together with a belief in ‘objective photography’, in which the photographer does not intervene, can be seen asa kind of programme of the ‘Disseldoef School’ from which Thomas Struth emerged. It was in Diisseldorf during the 1970s that he met Bernd and Hilla Becher, the foun- ders of this ‘school’, but he already knew the painter Gerhard Richter, ‘whose relationship to photography was diametrically opposed to that of the Bechers, It was these two encounters, of greater significance than a mere course of training, that probably pointed Struth towards his own per sonal path of development Gerhard Richter was investigating the relationship between painting land photography when, during the 1960s, he used photographs as models, which provided a kind of filter between the motif and the paint- ing. The photographs, he stated in 1972, had no style of their own, but served merely to exclude ‘personal experience’ and establish the painting as pure form of perception in which every motif loses its origin in reality (One can hardly describe Richter’s paintings as photographs executed with different means, because no matter how much he experimented with pho: tographs, he did not assign them any kind of role as moxels in his work. Instead, he collected photos by others, as well as his own, photocollages, and photographed structures from his paintings, and presented them as aan ‘Atlas of Photos and Sketches’, which represented a work form of its ‘own alongside his work as a painter, and which became increasingly systematized. ‘Thomas Struth did not became a painter asa result of his studies with Richter, bt instead chose photography, probably under the influence of his new teacher Becher, who at the time was restoring artistic autonomy to photography by rigorously restricting himself to a single topic. Bernd and Hilla Becher were photographing industrial monuments ~ facilities that ‘were no longer in use, but whose earlier functional form was preserved in an aesthetic manner, as if they were abstract sculptures. The motif, which they ‘found’ within reality, transformed itself in their photographs into evidence that the art of photography exists, an art that commands its own formal language. The objective view of an object becomes the basis for a photographic concept of the image that is subject to fixed laws of com: position In an exhibition held in the Kunstsammlung Nondrhein-Westfalen in 1991, Bernd and Hilla Becher presented their work alongside that of many of their former students, who in the meantime had made their own names 4 artists, including Thomas Struth with seven of his ‘museum photo-2 graphs’. The tite of the exhibition, ‘Prom the Distance’, was intended 9 refer to the distance all pictures preserve from their motifs: a distance in “which they assert their independence as pictures vis-a-vis the motif. A pic- ture in other words, isnot subsumed by the depiction ofits moti, Allofthe artists taking partexhibited a series of works, each concerned witha single theme, Colour, which Berra Becher has always rigorously’ eschewed, even though he began his carver asa painter, has since become a new field for photographers such as Thomas Struth (to mention but one) to work in, Even during his studies, Struth pursued his oven projects, including pictures of architecture, using black-and-white exposures, lnthem, archi= tecture was viewed as. location that reveals the social realy of today.The photographs show streets and spaces surrounded by buildings, which he captures from a central perspective in the same way that Bernd and Hilla Becher use their space-filling motifs, as i this arrangement were one of the ‘emblems’ of objective photography. Human figures, which are absent from the photographs, represent as it were an ‘empty spot’ in the space of, the street that has been built and rebuilt over the course of generations. The street photographs, as Julian Heynen remarked, ‘have, inscribed within them, the question of who the people are who belong to these spaces In ‘Water Street in New York’, an early example dating from 1978, ‘truth has chosen one compositional priciple: the camera is positioned on te line running down the centre ofthe street, a spot we could never pause at without immediately being run down, unless we were in a ear, from Which such a static view would be impossible. It is easy to imagine what time of day itis in this photograph of the deserted financial district. The photograph shows the streets traffic space and, at the sami time, the city If, which is seen here from an almost abstract vantage point, aban: ddoned entirely tothe car. The symmetry of the camera's field of vision, Which uses space to orient itself, contrasts with the asymmetry of the buildings, which gives expression to the temporal aspect of this fast- changing city. The visual order of the photo contrasts with the disorder of the motif. The street, an empty space in the city, forms together with the ‘buildings that open onto it the antithetical elements ofthe city, ‘Throughout his work, Struth has portrayed locations that have come to Identify specific cities. The major emphasis in his work became clear in 1987 when he exhibited the street pictures forthe first time, under the title ‘Unconscious Places’. The photographs were taken i cities Struth knew ‘well-in New Yorkas well ain Edinburgh, afew plaresin Japan, and again and again in his native Ruhrint Germany, where, ina series of photographs a dialogue takes place between industry and residential areas ~a dialogue in which the absence of human figures contributes to its eloquence. A view of the Campo dei Fiori in Rome (1984), in spite ofits apparent chance quality, illustrates with an almost inconceivable plausibility the architectural chaos of Rome's ancient town, which is nevertheless pulsa- ‘ing with life, The time spans involved in the construction of these build- {ngs are much longer here than those inthe financial district of New York. The most recent attempts to give the architecture a certain style and apply some town-planning to the area may lie several centuries back. Some accident of history led to the building of the elegant fagade of the large ‘mansion on the left, which, however, looks onto a narrow side street and tums away indifferertly from the important square. On the square, decayed walls are visible, butt (rom a shim or out of necessity, exposed naked ancl unprotected to the accidents of human usage. (Once again, a format of tension arises between the visual order of the photographic image and the disorderliness of the motif, which points to Water Setthe contingent nature of the world. The photo was taken almost from the middle of the square, Although the architecture dominate the pictur, itis the flower market with the road encircling it that identifies the sqxiare as a functional public space, The dismantled flower stalls testify to the pres cence of human beings, and inthis pause between market hours they have a peculiar pathos. The empty square and the blank walls of the buildings ane filled with this human presence, and this isthe key to an siclerstand- ing of the desolate, but still intact ensemble. The fact of being at the m of history, against which today’s Romans constantly manage to reassett themselves is what characterizes this location, the architecture of whielt ges nothing, more than to serve a social organism, and which has lost every trace of stylistic autonomy. Portraits have always been ais important part of Struth’s work as a photographer. Initially, they were individual, black-and-white porteaits, but since his first visit to Japan in 1986, he has increasingly used colour, inspired pethaps by the seductively light chromatic harmonies in Japanese art and Japanese landscapes, Soon Struth was also proctucing group por: traits, which he discovered was an entiely personal field to work in. In these, the relationship that has always existed between the model and the photographer is complemented by the relationship between the ine vidal members ofa family ora group of people ~azolationship involving, conflict, derearcation, and subordination, Beyondl biographical differences and similarities, the nlationship rllects a private social situation in which the actors, without being aware of their wn performances, assume char acteristic roles and poses. This quality of being the ‘transcript of a rela Lionshipy, as Struth has termed it, has been obsexved and eoramented on repeatedly, most recently in a special exhibition that took place in 1992 in the Museum Haus Lange in Krefeld, Germany! Two of these photographs are noteworthy, as they also take up the comparison between painting and photography, although they precede the ‘museum photographs’ series, and date from 1987 ond 1988, Steuth stayed at the house of Giles and Eleanor Robertson in Edinburgh in 1987, and the old paintings the house contained were characteristic of the couple's highly civilized private sphere, When we find out that Giles Robertson was an ait historian, a great connoisseur of Venetian painting, and had published a book on Giovani Bellini, it is even easier to let our- selves fall under the spell of the poetry in this photographic portrait Although the colours are reminiscent of a Venetian painting, the figures and the space they live in reveal their own precise truth, The light, whieh enters he oom at an angle to the eamera and thereby loses any trace of artificiality, gives the older couple, who by unconscious mutual agecement are posing forthe photo in theie habitual roles, a poetic presence that effortiessly clarifies the relationship between body and space. Having made the decision to use colour, Strath is now able loadapt the style of lighting customary in older paintings to an entirely new con text, to photography. Between the couple, on the wall ofthe dining room, there is an old painting, which, as itis not hanging in a museum, is, of course, not being looked at, but rather lived with, This rel rence to paint= ing recalls masterpieces of the Renaissance and Baroue periods that also cite paintings from the history of art in the background, in a simulorly vague and brief manner. While artists often use this motif to reflect on painting itself, hre it reinforces the analogous relationship between paint Ing and photography, which is so suggestively maintained in Struth’s composition,Ina photo ofa restoration workshop in Naples, Struth also approaches his subject from an angle, an effect that avoids the rigorousness of a from- tal shot and extends the path ofthe eye. It isa vast room in the monastery of San Lorenzo Maggiore, the yawning emptiness of which constrasts sharply with the lovingly arranged living room in Edinburgh. The four young art restorers have arranged themselves for the camera in relaxed poses, each maintaining his or her independence from the others, while simultaneously representing the community that works inthis spot. They seem to be welcoming the interruption of the monotony of their work, Which ties them down for months toa single painting, and they appear to embody life and the present day much more vividly than visitors to a museum in front of dusty, blank canvases that bear the colours and motifs of a diferent age No one can escape the melancholy of such a place. The paintings ar- ranged along, the wall in an almost endless row have lost all Uheir useful ness and meaning: old ane new, they are condemned to am illusory ex istence of uncertain length. They are not on display and asa result we are not encouraged to approach them consciously or systematically. Their anachronistic qualities are reinforced by the positioning, of the camera, which only touches them briefly while drawing the living figures com crotely towards the viewer, Inthe tive distinet colour systems, ote within and one is front of the paintings, the dramaturgy that Struth was later to apply in the ‘museum photographs’ is already fully developed. Struth, included this photograph in his portrait series, although it already pr figures the new group of works, Conceivably, he might also have photo= ‘would then have been nothing graphed the art restorers at work. The more than a special variation on the theme of painting and viewer that he \wenton to examine inthe ‘museum photographs’ | frwely admit that the examples of his portraits that have selected are exceptions rather than the rule ~ and that other, more ‘modern’ motifs dominate his porteaits motifs in which the harshnesses of today work Jind expression. Families, couples, and individuals from three continents represent the humanity of today, which, despite the constant repetition of apocalyptic slogans, has still not yet bees. vanquished either by or in the ‘media. One can only applaud Struth’s courage, a courage that we need today, in continuing the attempt to disclose the truth and atest to ons faith in human beings. Those who wish to hear Thomas Struts Voie read Benjamin Buchloh’s 1980 interview with him. I, to, have had com: versations with him, butin my comments here I have remained close tothe works, which must in the end speak for themselves, The works belong, to Untee groups ~ the stret pictures, the porteaits, and the museum pictures, and these in urn are being followed today by a fourth group, which shows yet an other surprising side to Struth: photos of local flowers and land- scapes that are to be hung in the rooms ofa clinic in Winterthur in Switzer land, ‘Tron Sah